Anomalous etch rates of photoresist with argon dilution of CF4/O2 plasma afterglows

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
It is shown that the downstream etching of a photoresist with CF4/O2 mixtures can be enhanced by a factor of at least 2 with addition of argon to the gas mixture. Analysis of the oxygen and fluorine atom densities with gas‐phase magnetic resonance downstream of the discharge suggests that argon metastables alter the homogeneous chemistry for fluorine atom production as well as the heterogeneous chemistry of photoresist chain scission.